The Nobel Prize in Physics 1945 The Nobel Prize in Physics 1945 Wolfgang Pauli The Nobel Prize in Physics 1945 Wolfgang Pauli Prize share: 1/1 The Nobel Prize in Physics 1945 was awarded to Wolfgang Pauli "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle". Photos: Copyright © The Nobel Foundation Share this: To cite this page MLA style: "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1945". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 15 Jan 2017. < Wolfgang Pauli and the Exclusion Principle Wolfgang Pauli and the Exclusion Principle In 1945 Wolfgang Pauli was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics:- ... for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle. Pauli gave his Nobel Lecture on 13 December 1946 in Stockholm and he began by describing how he came to came to make the discovery.

We give an extract from his lecture below:- The history of the discovery of the "exclusion principle", for which I have received the honour of the Nobel Prize award in the year 1945, goes back to my students days in Munich. While, in school in Vienna, I had already obtained some knowledge of classical physics and the then new Einstein relativity theory, it was at the University of Munich that I was introduced by Sommerfeld to the structure of the atom - somewhat strange from the point of view of classical physics. I was not spared the shock which every physicist, accustomed to the classical way of thinking, experienced when he came to know of Bohr's "basic postulate of quantum theory" for the first time. At that time there were two approaches to the difficult problems connected with the quantum of action. One was an effort to bring abstract order to the new ideas by looking for a key to translate classical mechanics and electrodynamics into quantum language which would form a logical generalization of these. This was the direction which was taken by Bohr's "correspondence principle".

Sommerfeld, however, preferred, in view of the difficulties which blocked the use of the concepts of kinematical models, a direct interpretation, as independent of models as possible, of the laws of spectra in terms of integral numbers, following, as Kepler once did in his investigation of the planetary system, an inner feeling for harmony. Both methods, which did not appear to me irreconcilable, influenced me. The series of whole numbers 2, 8, 18, 32 ... giving the lengths of the periods in the natural system of chemical elements, was zealously discussed in Munich, including the remark of the Swedish physicist, Rydberg, that these numbers are of the simple form 2n2 if n takes on all integer values. Sommerfeld tried especially to connect the number 8 and the number of corners of a cube. A new phase of my scientific life began when I met Niels Bohr personally for the first time. This was in 1922, when he gave a series of guest lectures at Göttingen, in which he reported on his theoretical investigations on the Periodic System of Elements.

I shall recall only briefly that the essential progress made by Bohr's considerations at that time was in explaining, by means of the spherically symmetric atomic model, the formation of the intermediate shells of the atom and the general properties of the rare earths. The question, as to why all electrons for an atom in its ground state were not bound in the innermost shell, had already been emphasized by Bohr as a fundamental problem in his earlier works. In his Göttingen lectures he treated particularly the closing of this innermost K-shell in the helium atom and its essential connection with the two non-combining spectra of helium, the ortho- and para-helium spectra. However, no convincing explanation for this phenomenon could be given on the basis of classical mechanics. It made a strong impression on me that Bohr at that time and in later discussions was looking for a general explanation which should hold for the closing of every electron shell and in which the number 2 was considered to be as essential as 8 in contrast to Sommerfeld's approach.

Following Bohr's invitation, I went to Copenhagen in the autumn of 1922, where I made a serious effort to explain the so-called "anomalous Zeeman effect" as the spectroscopists called a type of splitting of the spectral lines in a magnetic field which is different from the normal triplet. On the one hand, the anomalous type of splitting exhibited beautiful and simple laws and Landé had already succeeded to find the simpler splitting of the spectroscopic terms from the observed splitting of the lines. The most fundamental of his results thereby was the use of half-integers as magnetic quantum numbers for the doublet-spectra of the alkali metals. On the other hand, the anomalous splitting was hardly understandable from the standpoint of the mechanical model of the atom, since very general assumptions concerning the electron, using classical theory as well as quantum theory, always led to the same triplet. A closer investigation of this problem left me with the feeling that it was even more unapproachable. We know now that at that time one was confronted with two logically different difficulties simultaneously. One was the absence of a general key to translate a given mechanical model into quantum theory which one tried in vain by using classical mechanics to describe the stationary quantum states themselves.

The second difficulty was our ignorance concerning the proper classical model itself which could be suited to derive at all an anomalous splitting of spectral lines emitted by an atom in an external magnetic field. It is therefore not surprising that I could not find a satisfactory solution of the problem at that time. I succeeded, however, in generalizing Landé's term analysis for very strong magnetic fields, a case which, as a result of the magneto-optic transformation (Paschen-Back effect), is in many respects simpler. This early work was of decisive importance for the finding of the exclusion principle. Very soon after my return to the University of Hamburg, in 1923, I gave there my inaugural lecture as Privatdozent on the Periodic System of Elements. The contents of this lecture appeared very unsatisfactory to me, since the problem of the closing of the electronic shells had been clarified no further. The only thing that was clear was that a closer relation of this problem to the theory of multiplet structure must exist. I therefore tried to examine again critically the simplest case, the doublet structure of the alkali spectra.

According to the point of view then orthodox, which was also taken over by Bohr in his already mentioned lectures in Göttingen, a non-vanishing angular momentum of the atomic core was supposed to be the cause of this doublet structure. In the autumn of 1924 I published some arguments against this point of view, which I definitely rejected as incorrect and proposed instead of it the assumption of a new quantum theoretic property of the electron, which I called a two-valuedness not describable classically. At this time a paper of the English physicist, Stoner, appeared which contained, besides improvements in the classification of electrons in subgroups, the following essential remark:- For a given value of the principal quantum number is the number of energy levels of a single electron in the alkali metal spectra in an external magnetic field the same as the number of electrons in the closed shell of the rare gases which corresponds to this principal quantum number. On the basis of my earlier results on the classification of spectral terms in a strong magnetic field the general formulation of the exclusion principle became clear to me.

The fundamental idea can be stated in the following way: The complicated numbers of electrons in closed subgroups are reduced to the simple number one if the division of the groups by giving the values of the four quantum numbers of an electron is carried so far that every degeneracy is removed. An entirely non-degenerate energy level is already closed, if it is occupied by a single electron; states in contradiction with this postulate have to be excluded. The exposition of this general formulation of the exclusion principle was made in Hamburg in the spring of 1925, after I was able to verify some additional conclusions concerning the anomalous Zeeman effect of more complicated atoms during a visit to Tübingen with the help of the spectroscopic material assembled there. With the exception of experts on the classification of spectral terms, the physicists found it difficult to understand the exclusion principle, since no meaning in terms of a model was given to the fourth degree of freedom of the electron.

The gap was filled by Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit's idea of electron spin, which made it possible to understand the anomalous Zeeman effect simply by assuming that the spin quantum number of one electron is equal to 1/2 and that the quotient of the magnetic moment to the mechanical angular moment has for the spin a value twice as large as for the ordinary orbit of the electron. Since that time, the exclusion principle has been closely connected with the idea of spin. Although at first I strongly doubted the correctness of this idea because of its classical-mechanical character, I was finally converted to it by Thomas' calculations on the magnitude of doublet splitting. On the other hand, my earlier doubts as well as the cautious expression classically non-describable two-valuedness experienced a certain verification during later developments, since Bohr was able to show on the basis of wave mechanics that the electron spin cannot be measured by classically describable experiments (as, for instance, deflection of molecular beams in external electromagnetic fields) and must therefore be considered as an essentially quantum-mechanical property of the electron The subsequent developments were determined by the occurrence of the new quantum mechanics.

In 1925, the same year in which I published my paper on the exclusion principle, De Broglie formulated his idea of matter waves and Heisenberg the new matrix-mechanics, after which in the next year Schrödinger's wave mechanics quickly followed. It is at present unnecessary to stress the importance and the fundamental character of these discoveries, all the more as these physicists have themselves explained, here in Stockholm, the meaning of their leading ideas. Nor does time permit me to illustrate in detail the general epistemological significance of the new discipline of quantum mechanics, which has been done, among others, in a number of articles by Bohr, using hereby the idea of complementarity as a new central concept. I shall only recall that the statements of quantum mechanics are dealing only with possibilities, not with actualities. They have the form "This is not possible" or "Either this or that is possible", but they can never say "That will actually happen then and there". The actual observation appears as an event outside the range of a description by physical laws and brings forth in general a discontinuous selection out of the several possibilities foreseen by the statistical laws of the new theory.

Only this renouncement concerning the old claims for an objective description of the physical phenomena, independent of the way in which they are observed, made it possible to reach again the self-consistency of quantum theory, which actually had been lost since Planck's discovery of the quantum of action. JOC/EFR March 2006 This Month in Physics History This Month in Physics History More January 1925: Wolfgang Pauli announces the exclusion principle The year 1925 was an important one for quantum physics, beginning with Wolfgang Pauli’s January announcement of the exclusion principle. This well-known principle, which states that no two identical fermion particles can be in the same quantum state, provided for the first time a theoretical basis for the structure of the periodic table of the elements. Wolfgang Pauli Wolfgang Pauli was born in Vienna in 1900, the same year that quantum mechanics itself was born with Planck’s announcement of the idea of the energy quanta. Pauli’s father was a physician and chemistry professor at the University of Vienna, and his godfather was Ernest Mach. As a young prodigy, when he found himself bored during class, Pauli would read Einstein’s papers on relativity.

By age 20 Pauli, then a student of Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich, had published papers on relativity and written an encyclopedia article on relativity which greatly impressed other physicists, including Albert Einstein himself. Having learned classical mechanics and relativity, Pauli was disconcerted by quantum mechanics upon being introduced to it by Sommerfeld, and at first he found the subject rather confused. Possibly because of his brilliance, Pauli’s professors and colleagues tolerated some of his more annoying habits, such as his custom of sleeping extremely late and rarely showing up for lectures before noon. He was also extremely critical, and famous for deriding his colleagues’ less-than-coherent work as “not even wrong.” His tendency to criticize often spurred others to clarify their ideas. Pauli also had such an amazing propensity to cause accidents that scientists began to believe that even to have him come close to one’s lab meant doom for the experiment. After receiving his doctorate in 1921 and spending some time in Gottingen and then Copenhagen, Pauli took a position at the University of Hamburg in 1923.

He gave his first lecture there on the periodic table of elements, which he found unsatisfactory because the atomic shell structure was not understood. In 1913, Bohr had proposed that electrons could occupy only certain quantized orbitals, but there seemed to be no reason why all the electrons in an atom didn’t simply crowd into the one lowest energy state. There was no convincing explanation of the structure of the periodic table. Pauli had also recently worked on trying to explain the anomalous Zeeman effect, (a consequence of electron spin) and was convinced that the two problems were somehow related. In late 1924, Pauli made a big leap by suggesting the idea of a adding a fourth quantum number to the three that were then used to describe an electron’s quantum state. The first three quantum numbers made sense physically, since they related to the electron’s motion around the nucleus. Pauli called his new quantum property of the electron a “two-valuedness not describable classically.” Soon after making this proposal, Pauli realized that it could lead to the solution of the problem of the closed orbitals.

Then in January 1925, he announced the exclusion principle, stating that no two electrons in an atom can occupy a state with the same values for the four quantum numbers. Each electron had to be in its own unique state. Other possibilities are excluded. Pauli’s proposed fourth quantum number puzzled physicists at the time, because no one could explain its physical significance. Pauli himself was troubled by the idea. Pauli was also bothered by the fact that he couldn’t give any logical explanation for the exclusion principle or derive it from other laws of quantum mechanics, and he remained unhappy about this problem. Nonetheless, the principle worked–it explained the structure of the periodic table and is essential for explaining other properties of matter. Later in 1925, Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck, inspired by Pauli’s work, interpreted the fourth quantum number as the electron’s spin. Pauli originally applied the exclusion principle to explain electrons in atoms, but later it was extended to any system of fermions, which have half integer spin, but not to bosons, which have integer spin.

In the two years after Pauli’s announcement of his exclusion principle, the new quantum mechanics took off, with Heisenberg’s formulation of matrix mechanics, and Schrödinger’s wave mechanics, which was based on de Broglie’s idea that matter can have wavelike properties. In 1928 Pauli moved to Zurich. He spent time during World War II in the United States, and returned to Zurich after the war. In 1931, Pauli proposed the existence of a new particle, the neutrino, as a solution to the apparent lack of energy conservation in beta decay. After his many research accomplishments, he spent much of his later years thinking about the history and philosophy of science. Pauli always insisted on having a clear and coherent explanation of a phenomenon, and always strove to find both an intuitive understanding of an experiment and a rigorous mathematical scheme. Max Born once commented that, “I knew he was a genius, comparable only to Einstein himself. But he was a completely different type of man, who in my eyes, did not attain Einstein’s greatness.” In 1945, Pauli was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the exclusion principle. He died in 1958.

©1995 - 2017, AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newspaper provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed. Editor: Alan Chodos Wolfgang Pauli Wolfgang Pauli Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958) Austrian-born American winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1945 for his discovery in 1925 of the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that in an atom no two electrons can occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. This principle clearly relates the quantum theory to the observed properties of atoms. When he was 20, Pauli wrote a 200-page encyclopaedia article on the theory of relativity. He was appointed a lecturer at the University of Hamburg in 1923, and the following year he proposed that a fourth quantum number, which may take on the numerical values +1/2 or -1/2, was necessary to specify electron energy states. It was later found that the two values represent the two possible directions of spin for fermions.

In 1925 he introduced his exclusion principle, which immediately made clear the reason for the structure of the periodic table of the elements. In 1928 Pauli became professor of theoretical physics at the Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. Under his direction the institution became a great centre of research in theoretical physics during the years preceding World War II. In the late 1920s it was observed that when a beta particle (electron) is emitted from an atomic nucleus, there is generally some energy and momentum missing, a grave violation of the laws of conservation. Rather than allow these laws to be discarded, Pauli proposed in 1931 that the missing energy and momentum is carried away from the nucleus by some particle (later named the neutrino by Enrico Fermi) that is uncharged and has little or no mass and had gone unnoticed because it interacts with matter so seldom that it is nearly impossible to detect. The neutrino was finally observed in 1956. In 1940 Pauli was appointed to the chair of theoretical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., and in 1946 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Following World War II he returned to Zurich. Main Page | About Us | All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Timeline of Nobel Prize Winners is not affiliated with The Nobel Foundation. External sites are not endorsed or supported by Copyright © 2003 All Rights Reserved. Wolfgang Pauli und die moderne Physik / Virtuelle Ausstellungen / ms / Home - Wissensportal ETH-Bibliothek Hilfe Wolfgang Pauli und die moderne Physik Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) hat die Entwicklung der modernen Atomphysik massgeblich geprägt. Von 1928 bis zu seinem Tod im Jahre 1958 war Pauli Professor für theoretische Physik an der ETH Zürich. Im Jahr 1945 wurde ihm der Nobelpreis für Physik für das von ihm entdeckte Ausschliessungsprinzip verliehen. In wissenschaftlichen Streitfragen galt Pauli als unbestechlicher Kritiker und oberste Instanz, was ihm den Beinamen "das Gewissen der Physik" eintrug.

Die virtuelle Ausstellung "Wolfgang Pauli und die moderne Physik" zeigt Pauli als Person, präsentiert eine Auswahl seiner wissenschaftlichen Errungenschaften und geht abschliessend auf die Rezeption des Physikers ein. Nobel Prize in Physics: 1901-Present Nobel Prize in Physics: 1901-Present By Live Science Staff | October 4, 2016 07:44am ET MORE An atom consists of a nucleus of protons and neutrons, with electrons orbiting around. Credit: Dreamstime According to Alfred Nobel's will, the Nobel Prize in Physics was to go to "the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics." The prize has been awarded every year except for 1916, 1931, 1934, 1940, 1941 and 1942. Here is the full list of winners: 2016: One half was awarded to David J. Thouless, of the University of Washington, Seattle, and the other half to F. Duncan M.

Haldane, Princeton University, and J. Michael Kosterlitz, Brown University, Providence. Their theoretical discoveries opened the door to a weird world where matter can take on strange states. According to the Nobel Foundation: "Thanks to their pioneering work, the hunt is now on for new and exotic phases of matter. Many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics." 2015: Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald for showing the metamorphosis of neutrinos , which revealed that the subatomic particles have mass and opened up a new realm in particle physics. 2014: Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura for their invention of an energy-efficient light source : blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs). 2013: Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom and François Englert of Belgium, two of the scientists who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson nearly 50 years ago. [Related: Higgs Boson Physicists Snag Nobel Prize ] 2012: French physicist Serge Haroche and American physicist David Wineland, for their pioneering research in quantum optics .

2011: One half awarded to Saul Perlmutter, the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess, "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae." 2010: Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene." 2009: Charles K. Kao, "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication," and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor." 2008: Yoichiro Nambu, "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics," and Makoto Kobayashi, Toshihide Maskawa, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature." 2007: Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg, "for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance" 2006: John C. Mather and George F.

Smoot, "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation." 2005: Roy J. Glauber, "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence," and John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch, "for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique." 2004: David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek, "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction." 2003: Alexei A. Abrikosov, Vitaly L. Ginzburg and Anthony J. Leggett, "for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids." 2002: Raymond Davis Jr. and Masatoshi Koshiba, "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos," and Riccardo Giacconi, "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources." 2001: Eric A. Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle and Carl E.

Wieman, "for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates." 2000: Zhores I. Alferov and Herbert Kroemer, "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics," and Jack S. Kilby "for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit." 1999: Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman, "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics." 1998: Robert B. Laughlin, Horst L. Störmer and Daniel C. Tsui, "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations." 1997: Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips, "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light." 1996: David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff and Robert C. Richardson, "for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3." 1995: Martin L.

Perl, "for the discovery of the tau lepton," and Frederick Reines, "for the detection of the neutrino." 1994: Bertram N. Brockhouse, "for the development of neutron spectroscopy," and Clifford G. Shull, "for the development of the neutron diffraction technique." 1993: Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor Jr., "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation." 1992: Georges Charpak, "for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber." 1991: Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, "for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers." 1990: Jerome I. Friedman, Henry W. Kendall and Richard E.

Taylor, "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics." 1989: Norman F. Ramsey, "for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks," and Hans G. Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul, "for the development of the ion trap technique." 1988: Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino." 1987: J. Georg Bednorz and K.

Alexander Müller, "for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials." 1986: Ernst Ruska, "for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope," and Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, "for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope." 1985: Klaus von Klitzing, "for the discovery of the quantized Hall effect". 1984: Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer, "for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction." 1983: Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, "for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars," and William Alfred Fowler, "for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe." 1982: Kenneth G.

Wilson, "for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions." 1981: Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur Leonard Schawlow, "for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy," and Kai M.

Siegbahn, "for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy." 1980: James Watson Cronin and Val Logsdon Fitch, "for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons." 1979: Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, "for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current." 1978: Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, "for his basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics," and Arno Allan Penzias, Robert Woodrow Wilson "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation." 1977: Philip Warren Anderson, Sir Nevill Francis Mott and John Hasbrouck van Vleck, "for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems." 1976: Burton Richter and Samuel Chao Chung Ting, "for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind." 1975: Aage Niels Bohr, Ben Roy Mott

elson and Leo James Rainwater, "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection." 1974: Sir Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish, "for their pioneering research in radio astrophysics: Ryle for his observations and inventions, in particular of the aperture synthesis technique, and Hewish for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars." 1973: Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever, for "for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively," and Brian David Josephson, "for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effects." 1972: John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, John Robert Schrieffer, "for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory." 1971: Dennis Gabor, "for his invention and development of the holographic method." 1970: Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén, "for fundamental work and discoveries

 in magnetohydro- dynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics," and Louis Eugène Félix Néel, "for fundamental work and discoveries concerning antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism which have led to important applications in solid state physics." 1969: Murray Gell-Mann, "for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions." 1968: Luis Walter Alvarez, "for his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics, in particular the discovery of a large number of resonance states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chamber and data analysis." 1967: Hans Albrecht Bethe, "for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars." 1966: Alfred Kastler, "for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms." 1965: Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger and Richard P.

Feynman, "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles." 1964: Charles Hard Townes, "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle," and Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov and Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov, "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle." 1963: Eugene Paul Wigner, "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles," and Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D.

Jensen, "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure." 1962: Lev Davidovich Landau, "for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium." 1961: Robert Hofstadter, "for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby achieved discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleons," and Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer, "for his researches concerning the resonance absorption of gamma radiation and his discovery in this connection of the effect which bears his name." 1960: Donald Arthur Glaser, "for the invention of the bubble chamber." 1959: Emilio Gino Segrè and Owen Chamberlain, "for their discovery of the antiproton." 1958: Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov, Il´ja Mikhailovich Frank and Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm, "for the discovery and the interpretation of the Cherenkov effect." 1957: Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee, "for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles." 1956: William Bradford Shockley,

 John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect." 1955: Willis Eugene Lamb, "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum," and Polykarp Kusch, "for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron." 1954: Max Born, "for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction," and Walther Bothe, "for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith." 1953: Frits (Frederik) Zernike, "for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially for his invention of the phase contrast microscope." 1952: Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell, "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith." 1951: Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton, "for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles." 1950: Cecil Frank Powell, "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with

 this method." 1949: Hideki Yukawa, "for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces." 1948: Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, "for his development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation." 1947: Sir Edward Victor Appleton, "for his investigations of the physics of the upper atmosphere especially for the discovery of the so-called Appleton layer." 1946: Percy Williams Bridgman, "for the invention of an apparatus to produce extremely high pressures, and for the discoveries he made therewith in the field of high pressure physics." 1945: Wolfgang Pauli, "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle." 1944: Isidor Isaac Rabi, "for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei." 1943: Otto Stern, "for his contribution to the development of the molecular ray method and his discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton." 1940-1942: No Prizes awarded.

1939: Ernest Orlando Lawrence, "for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements." 1938: Enrico Fermi, "for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons." 1937: Clinton Joseph Davisson and George Paget Thomson, "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals." 1936: Victor Franz Hess, "for his discovery of cosmic radiation," and Carl David Anderson, "for his discovery of the positron." 1935: James Chadwick, "for the discovery of the neutron." 1934: No Prize awarded 1933: Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory." 1932: Werner Karl Heisenberg, "for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen." 1931: No Prize awarded 1930: Sir

 Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, "for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him" 1929: Prince Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie, "for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons." 1928: Owen Willans Richardson, "for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him." 1927: Arthur Holly Compton, "for his discovery of the effect named after him," and Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, "for his method of making the paths of electrically charged particles visible by condensation of vapor." 1926: Jean Baptiste Perrin, "for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter, and especially for his discovery of sedimentation equilibrium." 1925: James Franck and Gustav Ludwig Hertz, "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom." 1924: Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn, "for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy." 1923: Robert Andrews Millikan, "for his work on the elementary charge of

 electricity and on the photoelectric effect." 1922: Niels Henrik David Bohr, "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them." 1921: Albert Einstein, "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." 1920: Charles Edouard Guillaume, "in recognition of the service he has rendered to precision measurements in Physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys." 1919: Johannes Stark, "for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields." 1918: Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, "in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta." 1917: Charles Glover Barkla, "for his discovery of the characteristic Röntgen radiation of the elements." 1916: No Prize awarded.

1915: Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg, "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays." 1914: Max von Laue, "for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals." 1913: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, "for his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, inter alia, to the production of liquid helium." 1912: Nils Gustaf Dalén, "for his invention of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys." 1911: Wilhelm Wien, "for his discoveries regarding the laws governing the radiation of heat." 1910: Johannes Diderik van der Waals, "for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids." 1909: Guglielmo Marconi and Karl Ferdinand Braun, "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy." 1908: Gabriel Lippmann, "for his method of reproducing colors photographically based on the phenomenon of interference." 1907: Albert

 Abraham Michelson, "for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid." 1906: Joseph John Thomson, "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases." 1905: Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard, "for his work on cathode rays." 1904: Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt), "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies." 1903: Antoine Henri Becquerel, " "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity," and Pierre Curie and Marie Curie, née Sklodowska, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel." 1902: Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman, "in recognition of the extraordinary service they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena." 1901: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, "in recognition of the extraordinary services he

 has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him." Editor's Recommendations Pauli, Discovery Exclusion Principle - Timeline Index Timeline Index Pauli, Discovery Exclusion Principle Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics.

In 1945, after being nominated by Albert Einstein, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or Pauli principle," involving spin theory, underpinning the structure of matter and the whole of chemistry. More on this Website

Question: Who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945 for discovery of the exclusion principle?
Answer: Wolfgang Pauli